The Man in the Moss (43 page)

           
'For
me?'

           
'Tapes.
Listen, I'm not pushing, Moira, but I think you should do it.'

           
'Do
it?' She was starting to feel very foolish.

           
'Get
together with Willie and Eric and Dic and record his bogman music. I don't know
if it's any good or not, I haven't heard much of it, but Matt saw it as his
personal ... summit? His big thing? Life's work?'

           
Moira
looked hard at her, this austere, handsome woman, fifty-odd years old. Looked
for the old indomitable spark in the eyes. Truth was, she was still
indomitable, but the eyes ... the eyes had died a little. This was not the old
Lottie, this was a sad and bitter woman playing the part of the old Lottie.

           
'Then
we'll do it,' Moira said. 'Whatever it's like.'

           
'Good.
Thank you. But don't decide yet. You see - I'll be frank - if you'd come when
he wrote to you ... Well, he was quite ill by then, into the final furlong. He
wasn't fit to record. Not properly. And then there was the other problem. And
don't say,
what
other problem ...
let's not either of us insult the other's intelligence.'

           
'OK.'
Moira leaned back and slowly sipped her tea. They sat there in silence, two
women with little in common except perceived obligations to one man.

           
Mammy, how was he when he died? Can you tell
me that?

           
This
was the woman who could tell her. But Lottie had never had much patience with
religion of any sort - organized or ... well, as
dis
organized as whatever it was Ma Wagstaff was trying to do last
night with her patent witch bottle.

           
'Lottie,'
she said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't know. Well, maybe I knew inside of me, but I was
young, too young to understand it. And nothing happened, Lottie, I swear it.'

           
Lottie
shrugged. 'Better, maybe, if it had. Better for me, I can tell you, if he'd
gone off with you. But after sticking with it, through all kinds of ... Well, I
wasn't prepared to have him spending his last days ignoring me, eaten up with
old lust and regrets. So I'm glad you couldn't come.'

           
Lottie
took her teacup to the sink, dropped it into a plastic bowl. The sink was a
big, old-fashioned porcelain thing, pipes exposed underneath it with bits of
rag tied around them. No what Lottie's used to, Moira thought. Lottie is stainless-steel
and waste-disposal.

           
'You've
... had problems, then.' Christ, everything I say to this woman is just so
fucking facile ...

           
Lottie
turned on the hot tap, held both hands under the frenzied gush until the steam
rose and her wrists turned lobster-red. 'You could say that.'

           
Eventually,
turning off the water, wiping her hands on a blue teatowel, she said, 'I was
married for twenty-eight years to a man who collected obsessions. The Pennine
Pipes. The Mysteries of Bridelow. The Bogman ...'

           
Moira
said nothing. She was feeling faint. Her breath locked in her throat. She was
getting a strong sense of Matt's presence in the room.

           
'...
and you,' Lottie said.

           
In
the lofty, rudimentary kitchen, Moira heard a roaring in her head, saw a
flashing image of Matt in his coffin, white T-shirt, white quilted
coffin-lining, before it was washed away by the black tide carrying images of a
stone toad, dancing lights, the steam from writhing intestines liberated on to
a flat stone ...

           
'On
me night he died ...'

           
Moira
swallowed tea, but the tea wasn't so hot any more and she was swallowing bile.

           
'On
the night he died,' Lottie said, 'he sexually assaulted a nurse in the
hospital.'
           
I'm not hearing this.

           
She
started to look wildly around the kitchen. High ceiling with pipes along it ...
whitewashed walls with crumbling plaster showing through in places ...
stone-flagged floor like the church of St Bride ... two narrow windows letting
in light so white it was like a sheet taped across the glass.

           
And
this awful sense of Matt.

           
'The
nurse had long, dark hair,' Lottie said, almost wistfully. 'He addressed her as
Moira.'
           
The silence was waxen.
           
She felt scourged.

           
Lottie
said, 'I wanted you to know all this ...'

           
Matt
was dodging about under the table, behind the pipes, vibrant, shock-haired Matt
reduced to a pale, fidgeting thing, hunched in corners, flitting, agitated,
from one to another, giving off fear, hurt, confusion.

           
'...
before you made a firm decision about the music. You see? I'm being open about
it. No secrets any more.'

           
Moira
looked up into the furthest comer, near the back door, and a cobweb
inexplicably detached itself from the junction of two pipes and hung there,
impaled by a shaft of white light, heavy with glittering flies' corpses.
           
'Come with me.' Lottie rolled
down the sleeves of her cardigan and strode across the kitchen to the back
door, with a long, gaoler's key.

Part Six

From
Dawber's
Secret
Book of
Bridelow
(unpublished):

The most widespread and
powerful Celtic tribe in Northern Britain were the Brigantes, whose territory -
known as Brigantia - included much of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Southern
Scotland and had its southern boundary in the lower Pennines.

                       
The mother goddess of the Brigantes was
Brigid, and it is believed that many churches dedicated to 'St Bride' were
formerly sites of pagan Celtic worship ...

           
CHAPTER I

The bloody media.

           
Over twenty cars parked outside the Field Centre, and men
and women pacing the concrete forecourt, most of them turning round when Roger
Hall's car pulled in - where the hell was he supposed to park with all these
bastards clogging the place? Three cameramen, all swinging round, shooting his
Volvo Estate as it manoeuvred about seeking space, as if he might have the
bogman himself laid out in the back.

           
'No ... no, I'm sorry ...' Ramming his way through
jabbing hands holding pocket tape recorders.

           
'Dr Hall, have you any idea yet ... ?'

           
'Dr Hall, do you know when ...?'

           
'Can you just tell us, Dr Hall, how ...?'

           
'
No
!' He held
up both hands. 'There'll be an official Press statement later.'

           
Bastards. Leeches. One of the double doors opened a few
inches and he was hauled in. Chrissie and the other woman, Alice, got the door
closed and bolted behind him.

           
Inspector Gary Ashton was sitting on Roger's desk. 'Any
luck, sir?'

           
'Blank wall.' Roger was brushing at his jacket, as if the
reporters had left bits of themselves on him. 'However ...'

           
'I must say,' Ashton said, 'it seemed a bit of a long
shot to me, that a bunch of
villagers
from Bridelow would go to
all this trouble.' He smiled hesitantly. 'Look, I've had a thought. I hardly
like to suggest this, sir, but I don't suppose there's a University rag week in
the offing?'

           
'Don't be ridiculous,' Roger said.

           
'Well, I don't honestly think,' Ashton said tautly, 'that
it's any more ridiculous than your idea about superstitious villagers. Which
sounds a bit like one those old Ealing comedies, if I may say so, sir.'

           
Roger said, 'I think you should listen to me without
prejudice. I think I know how they've done it.'

Liz Horridge stood frozen
with terror at the edge of the pavement.

           
She was sweating hard; there seemed to be a film of it
over her eyes, and a blur on the stone buildings around her turning the
cottages into squat muscular beasts and the lych-gate into a predatory bird,
its wings spread as if it were about to hop and scuttle down the street and
overwhelm her, pinning her down and piercing her breast with its cold, stone
beak. She was leaning, panting, against the back of a van parked on the corner
where the main street joined the old brewery road.

           
Oh, and by the way, Mother, the
Chairman's hoping to drop by tonight.
           
Who?

           
The Chairman, Gannon's. Been
planning to come for ages, apparently, but, you know, appointments, commitments
...
           
Will he come here?

           
We'll receive him in the main
office, show him around the brewery. Then, yes, I expect I'll bring him back
for a drink. A proper drink. Ha!

           
Go. Get out. Got to.

           
She'd thought that when she got so far the fear would
evaporate in the remembered warmth of the village, but the village was cold and
empty, and a blind like a black eyelid was down in the window of Gus Bibby's
general stores' which always kept long hours and would always be lit by
paraffin lamps on gloomy days.

           
But it was Saturday afternoon, Gus Bibby did not close on
a Saturday afternoon. Saturday had always been firewood day, and there'd be sacks
of kindling outside. Always. Always on a Saturday.

           
Liz felt panic gushing into her breast. Maybe it wasn't
Saturday. Maybe it wasn't afternoon. Maybe it was early morning. Maybe the
whole place had closed down, been evacuated, and nobody had told her. Maybe the
brewery itself had been shut down for weeks and the village had been abandoned.

           
...
Chairman's
hoping to drop by tonight ...
           
No!

           
How could I not have seen it? How could I have sat there,
pretending to examine Gannon's proposals and estimates and balance sheets, and
not see his name?

           
Because it wasn't there ... I swear ...

           
Liz Horridge pumped panicky breath into the still, white
air. Not far now. Not fifty yards. She could take it step by step, not looking
at houses, not looking at windows.

           
Someone's door creaked, opened.

           
'Ta-ra then, luv, look after yourself ... You what... ?'

           
Liz scuttled back into a short alleyway, squeezed herself
into the wall. Mustn't let anyone see her.

           
'Yeh, don't worry, our Kenneth'll be up to see to it in
t'morning. Yeh, you
too.
Ta-ra.'

           
Door closing.

           
Footsteps.

           
Liz clung to the wall. She wore an old waxed jacket and a
headscarf over the matted moorgrass that used to be chestnut curls.

           
She emerged from the entry into the empty street, like a
rabbit from a hole. Wanting. Needing. Aching.

           
To sit again at Ma Wagstaff's fireside, a warm, dry old
hand on her sweating brow.
If he comes
... scream. Don't matter what time.

           
Can't turn back now. If you turn back now you'll surely
die. Believe this.

'How are you, Pop?'

           
He was out of bed, that was a good sign, wasn't it? Cathy
found him wearing a dull and worthy hospital dressing gown, sitting at his own
bedside in a shabby, vinyl-backed hospital chair. He was in the bottom corner
of a ward full of old men.

           
'Bit tired,' he said. 'They've had me walking about.
Physiotherapy. Got to keep moving when you've had a coronary.'